


yesterday

by epiproctan



Series: inseparable [1]
Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Reincarnation, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3125606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiproctan/pseuds/epiproctan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There’s this legend,” Sei went on. “It’s a Japanese myth. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” </p>
<p>Aoba tried not to let himself find Sei’s voice unbearably attractive. He refused to let it slide into his ear and set his heart pounding. He knew that it used to do that, back when Sei was something he could hold in his arms. </p>
<p>“It goes that if star-crossed lovers commit suicide together, they’re reborn as twins,” Sei said. “Isn't that interesting, Aoba?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	yesterday

Aoba hadn’t looked at Sei all day.

He was truly terrified that if he did, _that thing_ would happen again, just as it had when he’d first woken up this morning and turned his sleep-blurred eyes towards his twin brother across their shared bedroom. Sei had been dressing with his back towards him, facing the window, his slim figure’s outline made sharp by bold morning sunshine. Before he pulled his shirt on over his head, Aoba had caught a glimpse of paper-smooth skin, pale and ripe across his back, his vertebrae protruding and shifting as he moved. It wasn’t an unusual thing. Aoba had known that back, that body, dating back to when he had curled against it in their mother’s womb. He saw it often, having grown up sharing a room with his twin brother, not to mention countless common bathtimes, trips to the beach, hot days on which Sei would just forgo a shirt as he padded around the house.

But at this moment, apparently instigated by the view, some dam somewhere deep inside Aoba’s subconscious cracked violently and then shattered. Abruptly his mind had flooded with an image so vivid that it was clear it wasn’t just some perverse fantasy that had slithered into his head. He couldn’t make himself believe that it was the remnants of some depraved dream, either, because it was too bright, too clean, too tangible. The view in his mind was clearest when he closed his eyes, and from there he could see Sei’s face over him, perfectly rendered with the utmost clarity, gazing down at him with an expression that was anything but familial. Aoba could almost feel his searing skin under his fingertips, his hungry lips on his neck, his sweet frantic breath against his cheek, his slow, even, passionate movements deep within him.

Aoba had rolled over and buried his head under his pillow, trying to wipe his mind clean, but the drilling way that Sei had of looking at him, compounded in his vision with dilated pupils and a lust-filled gaze, was imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. He had curled in on himself, disgusted and humiliated. And the image, which felt more comparable to a memory than a scene built in his imagination, had followed him into his day when he finally managed to drag himself from his tangled bedsheets and self-loathing. The result of this was that he found himself unable to look his brother in the eye, because every time he met those dark irises he could only visualize them glazed over with intense pleasure, gazing at him like he was the stars in the sky.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened, either. Two weeks ago he could’ve sworn he knew the sensation of the ghosting of rose-petal lips on his, followed by his brother’s breathy little giggles. He seemed to remember waking up in the dead of night with his arms around a form almost bony in its thinness, his nose buried in dark hair that smelled like comfort, his bare chest pressed against a body warm and smooth. He had phantom memories of long narrow fingers locked between his own, of affectionate smiles and kisses on his forehead, of soft moans and passionate exclamations of his name. Aoba didn’t know when this had started, but suddenly his head was full of visions and sensations of things that he couldn’t remember ever actually happening, that he was _sure_ had actually never happened. And yet these thoughts, these memories, stuck with him more clearly than his remembrances of his day at work yesterday or what he’d eaten for breakfast that morning.

 So it was obvious that he _couldn’t_ look at Sei. Not at his twin, whom he’d always been close with, who respected and cherished him. Sei had always been his brother, a figure of support and warmth and acceptance, and Aoba knew he in turn found those things in him as well. How could he properly interact with him when this was happening in his head? It felt like a betrayal of some kind. Sei trusted him, Sei loved him. If Sei knew of the way Aoba’s mind was involuntarily treating him, as a lover, as a _sexual partner_ , he would of course be revolted. Aoba didn’t want these visions, and he was appalled by them as well, but feeling that he was somehow desecrating Sei bothered him even more.

Most of the time that these _things_ came he could avoid Sei until his mind had cleared, until he had filled his consciousness with better memories, like a successful day at work or a night out with his friends. But this was the first time his memory had been so richly and openly _sexual_ , and it stubbornly persisted. Over breakfast he was unusually quiet, his day at work was plagued by the memory of his sweat-drenched body writhing in pleasure, and when he came home to Sei smiling at him from the living room couch, he ran straight upstairs to shower before he could even ask how his day was.

But even if the vision branded into his thoughts clung stubbornly, Aoba couldn’t go on carrying its weight forever. He had nowhere to hide. Not when he and Sei shared a house, a bedroom, a life. If this kept happening, and Aoba had no sign that it would stop anytime soon, he couldn’t continue to live the life he was comfortable in here. As he tried futilely to shake the image once again, it occurred to him that his mere presence was probably poisonous to Sei. If he were to unwittingly do something, he’d never be able to live with himself. He was having a hard enough time with that as it was, disgusted by the very thought of the things that lived in his head. He started thinking in the shower that maybe he should move out. He’d thought he should before, unrelatedly. At his age that was probably more socially acceptable than living with your grandmother and your brother, and he didn’t know when these thoughts would stop. Sei could take care of Granny on his own, anyway. It wasn’t like she was senile, and Sei, though occasionally ill, was very capable.

Over dinner and while they washed the dishes, Sei asked him what was wrong three distinct times. Aoba couldn’t answer him, couldn’t even _look_ at him long enough to answer him, because when he tried he found himself thinking of his pink lips pressed against his ear, between gasps and moans whispering words like _Does it feel good?_ and _You’re so beautiful_. He knew the feeling of the aspiration against his skin and he couldn’t shake it, he couldn’t erase it from his memory or get rid of the goosebumps that spread down his arm when he thought of it.

Sei flashed him a series of concerned looks at various intervals, and Aoba just told him he thought he was sick. It wasn’t untrue. He _was_ sick, he was sick and twisted and perverted and awful. When Sei asked if there was anything he could do for him, Aoba told him to stay away. He probably just needed sleep, and he didn’t want him to be affected by it. This wasn’t untrue either. Sei couldn’t know about what was happening to him, Sei couldn’t be a part of this.

Aoba didn’t know what was happening inside of his head, and he was scared of himself.

The sun somehow rose the next day, disputing Aoba’s worry that this was the end of the world, though surprisingly it wasn’t this or even the ringing of his alarm that woke him. It was a soft touch on his forehead, tender and feather-light, and for a long moment he kept his eyes closed to bask in the warmth of the palm on his head. When he finally dragged his eyelids up, he was rewarded by meeting the affectionate dark eyes of a beautiful angel, whose lips turned up into a breathtaking smile when their gazes locked. Aoba reached up to pull the hand from his forehead onto his cheek, where it rested gentle and loving, and overlaid his hand on Sei’s just as he used to. Holding it steady, not breaking eye contact and heat growing in his stare, he turned his head slightly to press his lips against the lines in Sei’s palm—

Aoba froze, his nose pressed against Sei’s fingers, as sense trickled back into his body. What kind of lack of cognizance could have led him here? What kind of gap in his logical thinking, what kind of subhuman instinct, made him think that this kind of contact was acceptable? To cup his brother’s hand, to kiss his palm? Maybe when they were children, but two men in their twenties didn’t do that kind of thing, not even brothers. _Especially_ not brothers. 

Aoba sat up abruptly, yanking himself back from Sei’s touch, tearing his eyes away from his twin’s face. This was weird. He was being weird again. In that moment he would have sworn to anyone that Sei was not his brother but his lover, that he was waking up drowsy-happy after another night spent beside him, that he was waiting for him to bend down and kiss him. His stomach rolled.

“What are you doing?” he asked huffily, still not meeting his eyes.

“I was checking for a fever.” Confusion crept into Sei’s voice as he said this, and Aoba internally cringed. Of course he was bewildered by what had just happened. Who kisses the palm of their brother’s hand? Not anyone sane, probably. “You said you weren’t feeling well last night.”

“Yeah, and I’m still not,” Aoba said, turning away to hide his reddening cheeks. He was mortified, and for some reason he couldn’t flush the tingling urge to touch Sei again from his nerves. “You should get back.”

Sei took a half-step away, as though he’d been shocked, but his voice stayed concerned. “Are you going to work?”

Work. Aoba should go to work. Get out of this house, get away from Sei.

“Yeah.”

Aoba swung himself out of bed quickly, avoiding any physical contact with Sei, his teeth gritted and his fists clenched at his side.

But once he was at work, nothing truly changed. Sei may not have been there anymore, but he was cemented in Aoba’s head. He stayed there all day, smiling tenderly in Aoba’s imagination, in so many situations that Aoba had never independently thought of but just _appeared_ in his mind. Things like curling up under layers of blankets with him on a cold night, their bare legs tangled together and their arms pulling each other close, noses only inches apart as they giggled together. Like holding his hand, breathing hard, dazed by the pleasure of a recent orgasm. Like burying his nose in his hair and whispering the words, “I love you too,” into his ear, and not meaning it at all as a brother would.

It made Aoba’s stomach hurt. These thoughts, these scenes, would tear through his consciousness like it was tissue paper and disturb him with their clarity. They caused his gut to clench and his head to lose its lucidity, his fingers to twitch nervously and an overwhelming combination of guilt and disgust to drag throughout him. They came uncontrollably and overpoweringly, sinking sharp teeth into his wellbeing and holding there with immovable jaws. He couldn’t make them stop, no matter how he distracted himself, because it felt like they were just as solid in his mind as the sight provided to him by his own eyes.

Strangely enough, the scenes themselves contained little negative emotion. All his horror was his in reaction than intrinsic. Even the thoughts of things such as being buried deep in Sei’s mouth innately contained only joy and pleasure, not the kind of remorseful lust, the thrill of the taboo, that Aoba would expect to be the draw of such an imagining. Instead that remorse was inserted by him later, in response, and he couldn’t figure out why.

Sei was out when Aoba got home from work, probably with friends, and Aoba took the reprieve from his presence to shower and stretch out, exhausted, on his bed. Battling his own mind was far more tiring than he’d ever imagined before, and he was ready to simply lie there and thoughtlessly browse the internet on his phone until dinnertime. Not that he was hungry, anyway. He could probably go to sleep right then, avoid seeing Sei at all that evening, and maybe get enough sleep to repair his mental state to some sort of normalcy.

But then there were footsteps on the stairs and the door swung open, and Aoba was trapped. He tensed and rolled onto his side, away from his brother as he entered the room, not wanting to catch a glimpse of any part of him that might trigger something in his head. Of course now he had to talk to him, to deal with him. Of course he had to fight through this aching in his chest.

Sei greeted him cheerfully, a sharp contrast to his own mood, and just the sound of his voice brought on an alien urge to roll out of bed and gather him in his arms and kiss his face, an urge that Aoba didn’t know what to do with so he merely sat and grappled with it in silence. He focused his attention on his phone but small thoughts slipped through cracks in his concentration and rattled noisily around his mind, only rivaled by the sounds of Sei’s footsteps as he moved through the room.

“Are you feeling better, Aoba?” he asked after a moment of settling, his voice thin and sweet.

Aoba wasn’t feeling better. He was getting more and more ill by the hour, by the minute, and he didn’t know what the cure was. But if he told Sei that, he would fuss. He would ask for symptoms and cater to him. He would bustle downstairs and bring him tea and stick a thermometer in his mouth and ask him four more times over the course of the next hour if there was anything he could do for him. Aoba didn’t need that. Aoba didn’t need to be spoiled by a person who had every right to be utterly sickened by him.

“I’m okay,” he lied.

But Sei fretted, of course. Aoba could feel it in the air of the room without even looking at him. “Is your head warm?” he asked, nearing his bedside, and Aoba shifted away instinctively, curling in on himself subtly. But not so subtly that Sei didn’t notice. Of course Sei would notice, and he stopped. “Can I get you anything?”

“No. I’m okay,” Aoba repeated, sad and weary.

He was facing the wall, but he could feel the dark irises burning into his back, interrogating him wordlessly, waging war on his reticence. He had the temptation, though it felt more like an _instinct_ , to meet those eyes and bury himself in them. But he couldn’t. If he turned he would be lost, and that was wrong, terrible.

From the sound of it, Sei had finally turned away and began to tidy his side of the room, and Aoba did his best to ignore his presence despite the prickling energy buzzing beneath his skin. Sei’s mere existence suddenly seemed to flush him of logical thought and roll him into a haze.

“I read something interesting today, Aoba,” Sei began to speak, almost carelessly, as he went about his work, just as Aoba had feared he would. He swiveled his head to sneak a glance at his back, and found it narrow and tantalizing. It seemed strange to him that Sei could converse with him so normally when this was happening, and although he knew it was all in his head, something felt wrong with letting him go on interacting as though everything was the same as usual. It was good that Sei hadn’t noticed his strange behavior, and yet Aoba had never felt so alone in his feelings. He and Sei usually shared everything. It was weird to have to hide this from him, and it even struck him as odd that Sei wasn’t reciprocating his abnormality.

“There’s this legend,” Sei went on. “It’s a Japanese myth. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

Aoba tried not to let himself find Sei’s voice unbearably attractive. He refused to let it slide into his ear and set his heart pounding. He knew that it _used_ to do that, back when Sei was something he could hold in his arms.

“It goes that if star-crossed lovers commit suicide together, they’re reborn as twins,” Sei said. “Isn't that interesting, Aoba?”

Aoba had no choice but to raise his head, to meet Sei’s backwards gauging glance. Their eyes locked for only a moment before Sei returned his attention to what he was doing.

“What?” Mouth dry, it took Aoba a number of seconds before he could rasp out, “That…that’s a weird myth.”

Sei laughed, gorgeous and melodious. “Isn’t it?”

Another moment passed as switches flipped, circuits sparked to life, gears turned and doors opened in Aoba’s mind. He tried to quiet the raging tempest of his thoughts long enough to ask, “Do you believe in past lives?”

Sei didn’t look at him as he spoke this time, but he did give a small chuckle as he said, “Of course.”

Aoba silently put his phone on the bed and slid off the blankets, then left the room. When he reached the bathroom he stopped at the sink to rinse his face in cold water, and then he stared himself down in the mirror.

Of course it sounded ridiculous in every way. Implausible. It was just a legend, or more like a fairytale. A myth. Something unbelievable and unreal, silly to even think about. Preposterous, absurd, laughable, unreasonable—

Aoba rifled through his memories, placing them, comparing them. _Now_ versus _then_ and _here_ versus _there_ and _this Sei_ versus _that Sei_. It was impossible, it was out of the reach of his understanding. But it was irrefutable.

He and Sei, once upon a time, in a different life, had not been twins. They had been lovers.

Aoba spent the night at Mizuki’s. When he’d been asked what was wrong as soon as Mizuki opened the door to find his defeated posture on the other side, Aoba explained it simply as a brotherly spat. They’d get over it soon, he promised. They just needed a little space. Almost immediately after, Aoba asked Mizuki if he believed in reincarnation. Aoba was too lost in his own thoughts to sift through Mizuki’s rambling answer, but it didn’t matter anyway. Aoba already knew.

The night passed slow and sleepless as Aoba stared at the ceiling, lost in a labyrinth of his thoughts. He tried to start at some sort of logical beginning and work through the issue, but everything seemed so jumbled and frantic that he couldn’t even imagine where that place would be. His immediate fear (and yes, it was a fear, the kind of that made his muscles clench and his hands tremble) was that Sei had also figured it out, and that Sei knew that this was Aoba’s reasoning for acting so strange, and that Sei would think he was some kind of degenerate pervert for regarding him in this way. But if he did know, wouldn’t he have _said_ something? They talked freely about almost everything, and Sei was quiet but he certainly wasn’t _shy_ , especially around Aoba. Well…maybe he wouldn’t have said anything. Maybe he had these memories as well and was simply unaffected by them, and here was Aoba acting like a confused fool all by himself. Maybe he felt that it was better left untouched, and since he was left unbothered by his memories, he saw no reason to confront them. Aoba shuddered at the thought that he was the only one troubled so severely.

It wasn’t like Aoba could remember any context of their relationship, even. He felt like he was standing with his nose up against a giant painting. He could see all the details of the brushstrokes but had no sense of what the image actually portrayed. He possessed many clear memories of being with Sei, and a few of a life before Sei, but none of anything that would classify them as “star-crossed”…or anything hinting at a suicide. He could only guess at a time period based on peripheral details, but no other hints at a setting made themselves clear to him. He saw few other people and felt little emotion other than an overwhelming passion. He’d opened a thousand-piece puzzle to find only fifty of the pieces in the box.

All in all it seemed rather unpleasant to him. What was the point in being reborn with your lover if you couldn’t love them? Not that Aoba didn’t love Sei, he certainly did, but until now he’d always done so in a very familial fashion. Was just the privilege of sharing the womb with them enough? Was it just for the purpose of knowing them? For being at their side, even if they were to one day separate from you? Aoba couldn’t comprehend it, especially not when the feelings from a past life were spilling over, flowing into him, pressuring him to not just love Sei but to be in love with him. Those feelings weren’t easy to detach from his other feelings for his brother, and it left him helpless and floundering.

And then, of course, there was the biggest question of all:

From here, what now?

Aoba didn’t want to go home but he knew that he couldn’t hide at Mizuki’s forever. Two days was long enough, and he was out of excuses for Granny about why he wasn’t coming back, and the vibrations of the near-hourly stream of texts from Sei asking if he was feeling better and eating enough were starting to make Mizuki antsy. Plus he was being a coward, and he realized that. If he was ever to move on from this, he would have to face it. He would have to face Sei, and accept what was happening beside him, or learn how to deal with it enough so that it was no longer a concern. He promised himself that it could all be smoothed over. That as soon as he saw Sei’s face, just the idea of him as a sexual being would turn his stomach in revulsion and nausea, as a brother was supposed to. Most people were appalled by the notion of their own siblings’ sexuality, and it would be the same between the Seragaki brothers once again, even if in some long-gone life they had not been connected by bonds of family but of romance and desire.

These thoughts went instantaneously out of his mind the moment he trudged through his bedroom door and his eyes alighted on Sei. Sei, beautiful Sei, silky hair in perfect order as it swept across his forehead and fell to his shoulders, shoulders that were tiny, frail, thin, and as pale as the moon. He was lounging on Aoba’s bed, on _Aoba’s_ bed, an oversized sweater dripping from his small frame, his slim legs poking out from a pair of too-short shorts underneath, and Aoba could have sworn that those thighs were created with the sole purpose of seducing him. He managed to drag his eyes back to his brother’s face but found no relief there, only the affectionate beauty of Sei’s gaze, deep dark eyes framed by thick black eyelashes, and the curve of his rosy lips as they pulled back into a gentle smile made Aoba salivate.

“Ah, welcome back!” he chirped, sitting up and putting his book to the side. “Did you have fun at Mizuki’s? He told me you seemed sort of down. I hope you’re feeling better. Can I—”

“Sei,” Aoba finally gasped breathlessly, wondering how two days apart could have only fed the temptation. Maybe it was the sleepless nights, but there was no way to proceed. He couldn’t just move on from this. He couldn’t smooth it over, he couldn’t be sickened by Sei, he couldn’t be appalled by his body or push his concerns to the side. He wanted Sei, he wanted Sei in every way possible, sexually, romantically, even familially. His mind refused to clear itself of the feelings he had for him, in this life or the last, and there was nothing he could do about it. “I…I have to…tell you something.”

For a split second, Sei’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and then his entire expression softened from excitement to something more sympathetic, completely undemanding, gentle and understanding. “Aoba. Come here.”

Aoba followed his brother’s directions, going to the edge of the bed and sitting down as far away as he possibly could from Sei. The air between them was thick and heavy and full of power, like the rapids of a river, and Aoba was sure that if he tried to breach it at all the current would pull him under. But it was Sei who tried to cross, Sei who leaned forward into the no-man’s-land between them with a pale searching hand, with obvious intentions to settle it somewhere on Aoba’s person. He couldn’t allow that. Not in the state he was in, a guitar string tuned too tight, about to snap. He pulled back, away, and Sei froze like he’d been caught in Medusa’s glare.

It took him a long moment to frown, to let the air out of his lungs, and he pulled back a little bit, examining Aoba’s posture from bottom to top.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said softly. “Won’t you come here?”

Aoba stared down to the floor and shook his head. He didn’t trust himself to speak yet, and he especially couldn’t look at Sei, not right now, not when his skin seemed to itch with the frantic need to be in contact with him, when his fingers ached from the strain of not finding their way to Sei.

“Okay,” Sei agreed, in a tone that was much more tolerant, _relenting_ , than it should have been. But that was Sei, thought Aoba. If Aoba wanted something, Sei had always been right beside to hand it to him. “Let’s just talk about it.”

Aoba felt a little bit like his legs were pushing him into the river anyway, like he was wading into the cold water without even moving anywhere. Something was tugging hard at his ankles, fear and nervousness and anxiety, and it made him tremble a little bit. He still couldn’t talk, couldn’t open his mouth to give Sei any words or sign of what he wanted to discuss with him, and they began to build up in his throat, choking and dry.

“I can start, if you want,” Sei murmured, as if able to see through his skin into his larynx, and look at the sounds blocking his speech. Sei had always been able to do that, though. Sei always knew when Aoba wanted to talk and when he couldn’t. He always knew when he had to say the things that he couldn’t say for himself, and assume the things that just couldn’t be said aloud.

Aoba nodded, and Sei took a deep breath.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you the other day,” he started, and his voice was a thick downy blanket around Aoba, smothering him in its softness to the point where he couldn’t breathe. “With those things I said. I had thought that maybe you’d finally remembered, and that I should give you the chance to talk about it if you wanted. Though maybe that hadn’t been the best way….”

It took a very long time for Aoba to process this statement, because he had to stop and parse it word by word, and even then he felt lost amongst the syllables and extraordinarily confused. He was still trying to synthesize his thoughts when Sei slowly added,

“I mean, about us. Being reborn as twins.”

This did it, this plowed through the blockage in Aoba’s throat, and he cleared it away with a choked vocal pause. Suddenly he couldn’t have stopped the incredulous, startled words from bubbling to his lips if he had tried. He swung his head around so that his eyes met Sei’s.

“What?! You knew?”

Without even a tremor, Sei met Aoba’s eyes firmly. “About us? Yes.”

 “For how long?” Aoba pushed his nausea from his thoughts.

“Awhile,” Sei said. He glanced upwards and bit his lower lip, as though reaching back into his mind. Aoba wished that it could be his teeth there instead, and immediately felt a wave of rolling revulsion, not at Sei but at _himself_ , in his stomach. “A few years probably.”

And then the pain was shifting, giving him the feeling more like he’d been hit with a blunt object than a queasy roiling within him. The shock hit him with a physical intensity not unlike the punches to the gut he’d received in the fistfights of his teenage years. “You didn’t tell me?”

“I was waiting—”

“You were waiting for what?” He couldn’t stop, couldn’t control the words coming out of his mouth, couldn’t think long enough to be reasonable. Not that he wanted to. Nothing about this was reasonable. Everything was wrong, terrible, and his world was dissolving around him, and the emotions that he couldn’t control began to bleed out into his words and his actions. “For me to have feelings for my brother and be so confused about it?”

For the first time since Aoba had entered the room, Sei’s expression twisted into something less than patient and understanding. It was only the slightest ghost of a frown, the corners of his lips barely downturned, a crease or two forming in his forehead, but Aoba saw every detail of it in a brutal clarity that prickled uncomfortably at his skin, as though the preexisting pain wasn’t enough. “Aoba, please don’t get upset,” he said, and his voice held a pleading edge. “I thought it would be easier this way.”

Helpless against the water that was tugging him deeper, deeper, Aoba mirrored and amplified Sei’s expression with a frown of his own. He knew no one was at fault here except himself, somehow, but he couldn’t help feeling betrayed. It stung, that Sei would keep something from him, something of this weight and importance, and he wanted to blame him, blame him for all the horrible thoughts he’d been having and all the unbearable feelings he had. “Easier? Sei, I’ve been so confused! I’ve been….”

“I’m sorry, Aoba. I’m so sorry.”

Silence took over between them as they stared at each other. Despite being siblings, Aoba and Sei had never fought much, even as children, and Aoba was so unused to the idea that Sei was on an opposite end of understanding from himself that it felt unreal, dreamlike. He and Sei were always together, always taking the same side, always comprehending the other’s needs, and without that, it felt like his lifeline hadn’t just been severed but was now being used to strangle him. He wanted to fix this, fix everything, go back to how it was before he’d known all of these things, but knowledge can’t be erased so easily. He was stuck here now, and there was nothing to be done, because nothing would ever be the same.

It was hopeless. Tears pricked at his eyes.

“…it’s okay, I’m just…lost.”

Sei’s gaze shifted, his expression returning to one of desiring to comfort rather than to be comforted. “I know. I can’t really comprehend it all either. Just know that I’m here for you, Aoba.” He took a deep breath, so deep that Aoba could hear it tremble in his windpipe as he did, and leaned forward as though trying to ascertain he had his attention. “I love you so much.”

An anxious shiver stabbed through Aoba. He had enough sense left on him to realize that those words were no different from the ones Sei normally said to him before hanging up the phone or before bedtime, and yet they had contained these feelings, these unstated desires, for _years_. And with his new enlightenment, Aoba couldn’t help but want to cringe away from them. They were powerful, strong, and terrifying. Aoba hated them, hated how this world had twisted something so innocent and precious into something he didn’t want to hear. And it could never be changed back.

“Sei, I—.” Aoba was abruptly interrupted by the lump forming in his own throat, by the thought that if he kept talking he wasn’t sure he could stabilize his voice. He looked away from Sei again, wanting nothing more than to escape this reality. It was hopeless.

“Hm?” Sei prodded. Even though Aoba was no longer looking at him, he could picture the expression on his face, and he wanted so badly to not be able to anymore.

He took a deep, quivering breath. “I’m not really sure that I can….” It was hopeless, so hopeless, and everything felt like it was falling into a black pit from which he couldn’t escape.

“What’s wrong? What is it?”

“I can’t do this, Sei,” Aoba said, tearful desperation creeping into his voice. “I can’t look you in the eye or interact with you or call you my brother. It feels so weird and so wrong, and I don’t like it. I don’t want to be like this!”

It was around there that he started to cry because he was drowning, and Sei wasn’t there to save him anymore. Or rather, Sei _couldn’t_ save him anymore.

Sei was saying words, nonsensical syllables. “Aoba, Aoba, shh, calm down—.” Aoba couldn’t hear him, couldn’t comprehend— “We can start over. This isn’t the end of the world, Aoba, we’ll get through it—.” Couldn’t hear him over the sound of his own sadness, and the memory of sweet hands running over his skin, and the need for his lover, _no, his twin_ — “We can be brothers or anything you want—”

Aoba shook his head and brushed the tears from his eyes and looked at the floor, because if he looked at Sei his whole body would shatter. “I…can’t, Sei. I can’t do it.”

“Aoba….” Sei was begging with that one word, frantic in that perfectly calm way of his. But it wasn’t enough. Aoba was already gone.

He stood and left the room, and broke into a run when he heard Sei’s footsteps behind him on the stairs. Everything was blurring around him and he didn’t feel right in his own body, and the nausea had returned in full force and his head as spinning and he needed to be away, but before he could make it through the door Sei snagged his wrist. Aoba’s body burned and he gave a tug, but Sei held firm. _No._

“I have to leave,” he gasped out. “I’m not coming back. Don’t…don’t look for me or anything.”

The last thing Aoba saw before he fled from the house was a pair of wide, tear-filled, scared eyes, and they were the most beautiful eyes that Aoba had ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> So the incredibly talented [Matsuzawamiya](http://matsuzawamiya.tumblr.com) beautifully illustrated a scene from this fic [here](http://matsuzawamiya.tumblr.com/post/109718947861/this-scene-was-stuck-in-my-head-since-i-read). Please check it out!!


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